Not every revolutionary situation leads to a Revolution

Elections 2013 are coming closer, most probably in April, as the current Assembly will be dissolved after completing its five-year term in March 2013 (hopefully).  If it does, we might as well have the first democratically elected government to have survived its full five-year term. Strangely, it is a proud and yet an embarrassing feeling to have finally achieved the holy grail of surviving a full term without any army intervention (so to speak) in our 65 years of existence on the world map.

Politics is in the air and not a single day passes when my Twitter and Facebook timelines are not swamped by political debates. Though I do not purport to be an elections expert as there are already enough out there without me stepping into the fray, I will make an effort to present my thoughts about the elections from a layman voter’s perspective.

Lenin once said that a revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation. So is there such a situation in Pakistan. These elections are being heralded as harbingers of change-positive change i.e. But are they really?

PTI, PMLN, PPP, MQM, ANP are all, promising to usher Pakistan into a new era of prosperity. To me, after the nightmare 2008-2013 period nothing that comes from PPP should be taken at face value, well at least I will not take it. But despite all its failings – and those are some pretty gigantic failings- PPP still has support in Southern Punjab and  Sind, even though its popularity in interior Sind is waning, courtesy bad governance. While PMLN, ANP and MQM are squabbling over their respective regions, what Pakistan truly wants right now is a national party. Supporters of PTI will disagree with me as they will cite successful rallies in the four provincial capitals of Pakistan as proof of support, but rallies do not automatically translate into votes and despite claims, PTI is focusing to get seats in Punjab as it does not have enough “electables” to be a serious contender in three other provinces.  We can call PPP, the ghost of a national party it once was but now it cannot form a government without coalition support in Baluchistan, KPK, Karachi and Southern Punjab.

Since no party right now can claim to be a truly national party, what they are doing is squabbling over and exploiting, biradri, sectarian and ethnic votes. Policies and plans have been left over to be argued on social media and Talk shows, none of which, in all sincerity, will affect the opinion of the general voter populace much. The main body of voters resides in rural areas and is too hard pressed in their daily struggle of lives to really give a thought to the various economic and educational plans put forth by the political parties.

Hence, hunting for electables in constituencies is the main strategy of parties right now, policies and issues be damned.  This is the sad reality of Pakistani politics. Every election in this country has been called as a change but has the change ever come? Every single government in this country’s 65-year existence is a case study in bad governance and indecisive character. And, expect this trend to continue unless one thing happens. Spread of Education.

In my opinion, it all comes down to education when we are choosing which political party will be leading our country for the next five years. Like I said before, we are still quagmired in ethnic, biradri, sectarian and favor asking politics and all this is because our general ‘awam’ is not educated enough to really question the manifestos and economic recovery plans of political parties nor are they really empowered to vote freely.

Talking about published plans by political parties, they really haven’t evolved from being simple idealistic statements to implementable objective plans with checks and balances because quite honestly they don’t need to.

When 70% of our prodigal parliamentarians don’t even pay taxes and at least 60% of whom we will be seeing in the next assembly, how can you expect major changes? The general Pakistani population is too busy in making their ends meet to really go out into the streets to protest or to go in courts to sue their respective MNAs and MPAs and thus this issue will soon fizzle out into nothingness and will not affect the outcome of elections in possible sense, which really tells us something about how the voters will be marking their ballot in the upcoming elections.

So if you ask me if the next elections would bring anything new to Pakistan, will any positive change be coming, all I can do is to re quote Lenin, “…..not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution”.

The WaterKit Bashing Contest - A crazy "Invention Given Undue Attention"‏

I am going to jump the bandwagon here and write the customary lines- that are now probably a prerequisite to being called an educated and reasonable person these days- Yes, Agha Waqar's “Waaater Kit” is a sham, the scientific equivalent of a cheeseburger genetically programmed to sing Frank Sinatra. Yes, it is absurd but does this absurdity really deserve the media limelight? Does it really deserve the attention of the brightest scientific minds in Pakistan? Let us explore this territory to find out where both the rational and irrational minds went wrong.

The case of the water kit sham is so atrociously irrational that Willy O Coyote might have used it to run after the roadrunner. But, the worrying point is not the support shown by some elements of the media but the constant coverage and attention shown by those social and electronic media outlets that are against such unscientific thoughts. So much attention was shown by these flag bearers of rationality that people like me began to wonder what grievous crime had Agha Waqar committed, the enormity of which was so much that it inspired more blogs and media discussions than PMLN’s attack on Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital. Every major blog and news outlet has been discussing about this water kit and that to me is a total waste of time.

It might be possible to jolt your memories (no pun intended) to remember a similar claim made by anengineer (Rehan Aziz Farooqi)  from  Swat who also claimed to run a generator from water using the electrolysis technique and that method too flew in the face of the accepted laws of thermodynamics but the question that arises here is that why didn’t that self-taught engineer get as much attention as Agha Waqar? Probably Agha Waqar happened to be more eloquent in presenting his invention or maybe he just got lucky and attracted the attention of both pro and con groups of the media and the scientific circles. It is incredible to see that how fiercely the rationals clashed with the irrationals, how the enthusiastically debated on issue that was a non issue as soon as it was reported; and how they lamented (non-stop) on the decrepitude of Pakistani scientific educational system, when they themselves have done so much for our educational system that today we have to watch ‘inventor’s like Agha Waqar on TV. An argument can be made that the ‘rational section’ of our media and society were vociferously  attacking Agha Waqar because they thought that the Pakistan’s ‘Awam’ would be tricked into believing in Mr. Agha’s ‘Hoax’ and that would be a cause of  embarrassment for the whole nation. It is indeed a noble cause but in my view totally pointless. Why do I utter such blasphemy? Because even if we assume that the Pakistani  populace is lead to somehow believe that the water kit car functions really well, then do we seriously expect that industrialists and scientists would be flocking en masse to Agha Waqar and production would actually begin on it? If that’s a rational thought then our rationality is at par with Agha Waqar’s scientific grounding.

But perhaps we as a nation are looking out for someone to vent out our frustrations upon. Even though those ‘bright minds’ have pronounced the ‘water kit’ as a sham but they haven’t come up with their own brilliant plan as well.  All everyone cares about is how well can they ridicule this person as if Agha Bashing was a point scoring contest. In the light of current Agha Bashing contest, I am inclined to believe that the Water Kit Sham was once against exploited by our media and given undue attention for what? Dare I suggest ratings?  It would be worthwhile for our media (both liberal and conservative) to focus on the achievements of Pakistanis that have been acclaimed for example, how much attention was given to a team of Pakistani students winning a debate competition in Mexico? At least it was much less than Agha Waqar’s miracle kit. It is my humble suggestion that we should be promoting success stories of Pakistan’s ‘real achievers’ in the same way that we are promoting Agha Waqar’s sham. If media attention was not given to this quackery, then it would have faded away quickly, but then unfortunately that doesn't make up a good spicy read does it?